Los Zapateros de Santa Cecilia
by godfreyraphael
Summary: Modern day AU (of sorts). Hector and Ernesto part ways and Hector goes back to Santa Cecilia, where he becomes a YouTube sensation. Then the local football team decides to hire Hector as their new manager because of his videos. And then Ernesto comes back as well and becomes the team's new owner. Football drama and hilarity ensues.
1. The Parting of the Ways

The first thing I felt was a massive throbbing lump on the left side of my face, and my hand immediately flew up to touch the thing. Pain like lightning bolts shot out from the lump as soon as my fingertips brushed it lightly, and I cried out. The pain also caused me to open my eyes, and when I turned my head I was surprised to see that I was in the inside of a jail cell. There was a policeman sitting behind a desk, shuffling papers while the computer beside him had the words POLICIA FEDERAL bouncing around on the edges of the black screen.

The policeman heard my cry of pain, and he lifted his head up from his paperwork to look at me. "Ah, you're finally awake," he said as he stood up. "I apologize for the bruise on your face. That's Francisco's fault, but also in a way yours. If you weren't so unruly and kept trying to resist arrest last night then all this could have been avoided. Shit, I almost thought he'd killed you when your head snapped back from the hit. You really need to put some meat on your bones, man. I keep fearing you're going to snap an arm or a leg just by bumping into the walls."

"_Ay_, you will not believe how many times I've heard people tell me that," I muttered as I sat up on the bench that had served as my bed during my incarceration. I looked down and saw that I was still wearing my mariachi costume. My coat was open, revealing the white undershirt beneath the brownish-pink coat. Through the thin cloth I could see my ribs expanding and contracting to the rhythm of my lungs. Once again I tried to touch the bruise on my face, and once again the pain stopped me from exploring it further. Although I could imagine how I must look like to the policeman: a thin, bony man with a rectangular face that right now had an onion glued to it.

It was then that I noticed that I was alone in the cell. As in there was literally no one else in there with whom I had shared the space. I mean, it was possible that I had shared the cell with someone else during the time that I was unconscious from the policeman's punch and that they had been freed sometime in the morning before I woke up, but I thought that it was highly unlikely. "Señor," I called out. "Señor!"

"What is it now, man?" the policeman on duty asked.

"You didn't happen to see another man with me when you, er, arrested me, did you?" I asked. "Big guy. Taller than me by half a head, chin like Jay Leno's, broad shoulders, barrel chest, but looks like he missed leg day. Seen him, sir?"

"I'm afraid not, señor," the policeman shook his head. "I wasn't the officer who arrested you. But I am familiar with your case report, and unless I am mistaken, a person matching the description you gave me claims to be the person who reported you in for unruliness."

"What? Are you serious?" I asked. Then I sighed and muttered, "_Ay_, Ernesto, you _culero_. You've finally gone and seized your moment, haven't you?"

Now comes the point in the story where I say that I should have seen it coming. And unlike many other stories, this time it's true. I did see Ernesto's betrayal coming. Not from a mile away, but I could sense that it was in the offing. Ernesto and I, we were friends for as long as I could remember. In fact, he was the first friend that I had ever made, and I remember the two of us as we ran down the old cobblestone streets of Santa Cecilia, our hometown, scaring off the stray cats and dogs and making a ruckus that woke up everyone from their siestas. The fact that we were both lovers of music just made the brotherhood between us run deeper, and we were always talking about how we were going to become the biggest duo Mexico has ever produced. But then Ernesto got a taste of what it was like to be in the limelight, and he realized in his heart of hearts that maybe he didn't really want to share it with anyone else. _Si_, he didn't say anything about it to me, but I could feel it. I could see it in his eyes, the green-eyed monster lurking behind the face of my friend. He had invited me for some drinks last night, supposedly to celebrate the fact that we had just landed a gig to serve as frontmen for some concert or another. The mistake I made was letting Ernesto buy me drink after drink while merely sipped at his own beer. And while I wouldn't say that I couldn't handle my alcohol well, I still have no memory of what in the world happened after what was either the eighth or the tenth bottle. See, I can't even remember how many beers I've drunk before I woke up in this cell.

I sighed and shook my head, and then I looked up to the policeman and asked, "Can I use that one phone call now, señor?" I asked. "Or am I going to have to wait to get out of here before I can call somebody?"

"I'm sorry, señor, but you have it right the first time," the policeman replied. "You're going to have to wait for your release before you can phone your lawyer again."

"It's not really my lawyer I want to call, but okay," I nodded. "Then how long am I going to have to stay here?"

"Oh, about…" The policeman looked at his wristwatch. "…five seconds." He then stood up, took a keyring hanging from his belt, and inserted a key into the lock of my cell. He looked at his watch once again and then, as it ticked, he unlocked the cell and swung open the door made of metal bars. "Welcome back to the free world, señor," he said with a smile. "I hope you've learned from your experience and will not be unruly and resist arrest ever again."

"Oh, yes, sir, I can assure you that I've learned a lot from my brief time behind bars," I said with a smile of my own.

"Come, follow me," he said, and I did as he said and walked behind him towards another set of doors before stopping in front of a desk that looked very similar to the one that he had just left. The policeman sitting behind his counter could have been the twin brother of the policeman I was following. "Sargento Fernandez here to release Prisoner 300920," the officer I had been following said.

"Prisoner 300920," the other policeman muttered, scrolling through the records on the computer before finding the one pertaining to me. I don't know why, but being referred to as a prisoner with only a number to identify me felt… wrong. It was like I was being turned into a nobody. And it wasn't like I was a career criminal; I'd just been thrown into the slammer to dry out and sleep my hangover away. Anyway, the policeman in charge of releasing typed in a few commands, comments, or codes or whatever into the computer and then hit ENTER. "Prisoner 300920 has been released," he said.

"Follow me again, señor," Sargento Fernandez, the first policeman, said to me. "Now it's time to go through processing."

We walked across the room towards a third desk that stood in front of a room filled with cubbyholes and other such compartments. This time, the policeman standing behind this desk could have been my twin brother, only he had a thicker head of hair and a smooth face, unblemished by any signs of facial hair. "Prisoner 300920 to go through release processing," Sargento Fernandez announced.

This policeman accessed the computer records to make sure that I had indeed been released, and then he turned to me and said, "If you will wait a moment, señor, I will get your belongings." He then stood up and walked into the room with the cubbyholes, and after a few moments of searching he pulled out a duffel bag and a guitar case from a cubbyhole and a cabinet-like space respectively. He placed the duffel bag and the guitar case on top of his desk, and then he bent down, opened a drawer, and retrieved a brown leather wallet from inside. "Your belongings, Señor Rivera," he said, placing the wallet on top of the duffel bag.

I took the wallet and opened it. The first thing I saw was the driver's license, and my face stared back at me from behind the plastic lining of the wallet pocket where I had put it. The driver's license had been issued to Hector Rivera Vazconcelos of Santa Cecilia, State of Oaxaca. The second thing I saw was the photograph of my family, the one that I looked at every day and every night to remind myself why I had decided to go with Ernesto and try our luck in Mexico City. I was standing to the right, trying to look as dignified as I could in my suit, a hand-me-down from my father. My wife Imelda was seated and wearing that purple dress that she always wore for almost any occasion, although I now couldn't remember why she was scowling at the camera like she was (although if memory serves, it probably has something to do with me or a decision I've made; God knows 'Melda wore that exact same expression when I told her that 'Nesto and I were going to Mexico City). And in between us was our beloved daughter Coco. It still brings me both happiness and tears whenever I remember the moment when I first held little Coco in my arms, and every time I remember the look on her face when I told her that I had to go away to earn a living to support us, my heart breaks just that little bit more. If only Imelda and I hadn't done as teenagers do then maybe we both wouldn't have had to work as hard as we were doing just to support ourselves and our family. On the other hand, we both wouldn't have had Coco in our lives, and that was a thought that I could never bear to entertain.

I examined the inside of the wallet further and saw that the money inside was still in there, every bill of every denomination that I remember still present inside. You could never be sure with _la policia_. Sometimes you might encounter the good and honest cops, and sometimes you might encounter corrupt pigs who would like nothing more than to squeeze dry the next hapless citizen they meet.

I put the wallet into the pocket of my mariachi pants and then reached for the duffel bag. I unzipped the bag and dug through the changes of clothing and toiletry kit that I had packed to search for my songbook. On it were written the lyrics and sometimes even the notes and sheet music for the songs that I had written for Ernesto to sing. Well, most of them. Some of them I had written down for posterity, and because I knew that I was a forgetful airhead who would quickly lose all of these ideas for songs and such in my head if I didn't write them down somewhere. The songbook wasn't easy to miss; it was a square notebook the size of a small bathroom wall tile with a cardboard cover wrapped in blue fake leather. But no matter how hard I looked, the songbook was nowhere to be found.

"Is something wrong, señor? Is something missing?" the policeman in charge of belongings asked.

"No, no, it's all right. It's fine," I shook my head. I then reached deep inside the duffel bag and began patting the bottom. I felt a small rectangular bump and smiled. At least he hadn't found _that_. I zipped closed the duffel bag and checked my guitar case next. The white guitar inside was still there, seemingly untouched. The carved wooden skull that served as the guitar head grinned emotionlessly at me, and I smiled back. I guess I was still in a bit of a hangover from _Dia de Los Muertes_ when I decided to customize my guitar, and the skull was evidence of that. I strummed a few notes on the guitar before deciding that yes, it was still intact and in the same state it was when I had put it inside the case last night.

I hefted the duffel bag onto my shoulder and took hold of the guitar case. I saw out of the corner of my eye Sargento Fernandez wince at the weight of the duffel bag on my shoulder, but he got over it and he said to me, "_Adios_, Señor Rivera, and _buenos dias_."

"_Buenos dias _to you too, Sargento," I replied, and I walked out of the police station and into the brisk morning heat of Mexico City. The sun had just risen from behind the mountains, and yet I could already feel the sweat forming beneath my undershirt. And something told me that it wasn't all because of the heat. I walked down the street in search of the nearest payphone and soon found one just a block away from the police station. I laid my guitar case down beside the booth, reached for my wallet and took out as many coins as I could. I formed the coins that I got into a little stack that I then put on top of the payphone, and then I put three coins in the slot, took a deep breath, and dialed a number from memory. The line rang four times before a curt female voice picked up and said snappily, "Rivera."

"Imelda," I said in greeting.

There was a gasp, and then an exclamation, "Hector!" followed by a few seconds of silence in which I knew she was gathering both her thoughts and her emotions. "Good of you to remember to call back to your wife and child, _musico_," she finally said. "So how are things working out between you and The Chin?" "The Chin" was Imelda's nickname for Ernesto, so derived because of his most striking facial feature. Ernesto didn't like the nickname, and Imelda didn't care that Ernesto didn't like it. Just one of the many things on which they don't see eye to eye; my decision to go with Ernesto to make our fortunes in the capital being another one of those things.

"Yes, actually, about that, Imelda," I said haltingly, not sure of the words I was going to say. "I may have some good news and some bad news for you, _mi amor_."

"Oh, really? And what could that be?" Señora Imelda Rivera de Rivera, birth name Imelda Rivera Gutierrez, asked me.

"Well, Imelda, the good news is that I'm coming home much earlier than I anticipated," I said.

"Really?" Imelda asked, and for a very brief moment I thought I heard something close to excitement creep into her voice. But it was just that, a brief moment, and as soon as she spoke again it was gone. "That is certainly good news, Hector," she continued. "What has the Chin have to say about that though?"

"Ah, yes, Imelda," I said, rubbing my eyes with my free hand. "That is where the bad news comes in."

"Oh, my God!" Imelda suddenly exclaimed. "Don't tell me, Hector. Is Ernesto… dead?" The last word came out barely a whisper on the telephone.

"No, no, Imelda, he's fine," I replied. "Or at least I think he is. And I guess you could say that he was actually the one who left me for, well, dead."

"What? Why would he do that?" Imelda asked. "Did something happen? Did he do something crazy and stupid? Did _you_ do something crazy and stupid? What is it, Hector?"

"I guess you could call it 'creative differences,'" I said. "But really, it's more like we were both drifting apart. But I'd rather not talk about it here. Anyway, the dream is over. The duo is gone. And I'm going home."

"Going home…" Imelda repeated. "But what about your dreams? Your passion? Your music?"

"Please, Imelda, I'd rather not talk about that," I said, shaking my head. I still hadn't gotten over the fact that the one man whom I thought was my friend would turn his back on me and even steal from me because he could no longer share the spotlight with me. Not that I minded that; I actually didn't like the spotlight all that well. I'd thought that Ernesto and I had actually had a good thing going for us: he was going to get and bask in all the praise while I kept to the background and nodded along. But apparently even that arrangement was now unacceptable to Ernesto de la Cruz the star.

"So what are you going to do now?" Imelda asked me.

"You know, I've been thinking about it," I replied. "I think it's time that we both swallowed our collective pride and go back to the _zapateria_."

"What!? Are you crazy, Hector? No!" Imelda shouted at me. "Do you really think they're going to just accept us both with open arms just because you said sorry for what you did to me?"

"That's why I said we have to swallow _our_ pride, 'Melda," I repeated. "Now I know that that might be very hard for you to do because you've always been a very proud woman, and I've always loved that about you, but now I think it's time to end it. And yes, I am going to say sorry to you father and your mother and I'm going to promise that it won't happen again."

"Well of course it's no longer going to happen because it's now perfectly legal in the eyes of both the law and the Lord," Imelda retorted, and I could imagine her rolling her eyes as she said those words. "And remember that I didn't marry you just because of the sex. I married you because I love you and because I love Coco."

"And hopefully your parents have finally realized that they also actually love Coco despite the things they've said before," I added. Well, it wasn't that much of a stretch. Imelda's twin brothers Oscar and Felipe were already quite taken with Coco, and even La Señora Rivera, Imelda's mother, had a soft spot for her granddaughter. It was really just Imelda's father who was the big problem with any potential reconciliation between our little family and theirs. I'm sure that he is still quite angry at me for having deflowered his precious Imeldita at just eighteen years old even though it was actually Imelda who had wanted to try it out with me, and the product of that particular union had been little Coco.

"Okay, Hector," Imelda said. "Let's say that my father, as unlikely as it sounds, finds it in his heart to forgive you and me for our impropriety and accepts both of us back into the family. What then? What are you going to do? Work at the _zapateria_? Do you know, do you even want to know what kind of job my father would love to make you do for him and the _zapateria_?"

"You know what? I don't care," I replied. "Yes, it's true. I don't care what your father makes me do. I'll sweep up the shop floors. I'll throw away the trash. I'll clean the bathrooms. Hell, I'll even watch over the leather tanning if that's what he wants me to do. Whatever it is, I'll do it."

"Oh, my God," Imelda muttered. "You're really serious about that, aren't you? You know what, Hector? You're right. This isn't something that we can talk about over the phone. How soon can you get home?"

"As soon as I can find a bus back to Santa Cecilia," I replied.

"Right. I'll be waiting for you, _mi vida_. _Te amo_."

"_Te amo, mi vida_. I'll see you soon. And Coco." I waited until Imelda had put the phone down at her end before I put down mine. I had gone three-quarters of the way through my stack of loose change for the payphone, and I shoved the remainder into my pocket before I picked up my guitar case and began walking for the bus terminal. It was going to be a long ride home, and it was going to give me plenty of time to think.

* * *

A/N: Like some of my other works, this one just came in a moment of inspiration. I was just waiting for our ride during vacation and reminiscing about _Coco_ and the thought came to me. I already had a story planned about a guy who plays _Football Manager_ and posts it on YouTube, and then his hometown club sees the videos and decides to hire him as their new manager after they fired their last one. It then just turned into a matter of changing names around to turn what was my original work into a _Coco_ fanfic. As always, if you like where this is going then feel free to leave a review or a comment. It really allows me to know what my readers like and what they want me to improve on. Thanks! — GR


	2. (Don't) Remember Me

Getting back to Santa Cecilia was the easy part. It was just a matter of finding the right bus, getting on, and paying the fare. It was going to the _zapateria_ to face Imelda's family which was hard. Let's just say that I am not a very welcome face over there. Don Ramon said so. And nobody goes against Don Ramon, no matter what. Except me, of course. And of course I never intended to go against Don Ramon in the first place. But Imelda and I did something stupid without thinking of the consequences, as young people often do, and while the results of our youthful "adventure" was our beloved Coco, our actions did not endear me to Don Ramon at all. In fact, he made it clear that he wanted to see neither hide nor hair of me for as long as he lived. And me, in my youthful arrogance, declared that I didn't need his help or his money to raise my family anyway.

As you can tell, that didn't work out too well for me. Not only did my musical career fail to take off like I had imagined it would, my best friend also decided to abandon me and pursue his own career on his own, and he even took my songs while he was at it. These were pretty desperate times for me. So I did what I never thought I would ever do, swallow my pride and come back to Santa Cecilia and admit that I was wrong. You should have seen it when I literally crawled back to the _zapateria_ and, on my hands and knees, begged Don Ramon Rivera for his forgiveness, as well as told him my willingness to do anything and everything that I could to get that forgiveness short of being his personal slave. It was a scene straight out of a _telenovela_, I tell , maybe I was willing to go down to becoming Don Ramon's slave, but thankfully Doña Manuela, Don Ramon's wife and Imelda's mother, talked Don Ramon out of it. But I still had to take out the trash from the _zapateria_'s factory floor, the place where they make all the shoes.

That's where I made my start with the Rivera Shoe Company of Santa Cecilia, a cleaner of the factory floor. Don Ramon gave me that title, but my job description is basically janitor and garbage-man all rolled into one, meaning I collected all of the leather scraps, swept up the loose nails before they stuck themselves into someone's foot and caused a tetanus infection, and I was also the one who went to the tanning stations outside of town and swept up any dung that had spilled out of their tanks and onto the ground. Yes, apparently the secret to Rivera shoes being so fine is the fact that they still use dung to soften or tan the leather or whatever it is that tanners do to the leather with dung. It's all technical, and I never stay around long enough to ask.

I think I must have been the _zapateria_'s cleaner for an entire year before Don Ramon finally gave me a "promotion" to apprentice shoemaker. Later I would learn that that was only because Doña Manuela had talked him into promoting me, but personally I didn't mind. Cleaning up the factory floor was all right with me; it was the constant trips to the tanners that nearly drove me out of my mind. I tell you, as I write this I can imagine the smell of the feces stewing in the tanners' tanks wafting back to my nostrils. The smell of the dung actually clung to my clothes, and Imelda would not let me anywhere near her or Coco for three days every time I went back from the tanners. She even threatened to burn all of my clothes if I didn't find a way to get the stench out. And with Imelda, you just know that when she says something, she means it. If she could ban music for it ruining my life then she would.

But anyway, I got through the year without Imelda burning any article of my clothing (and only because my mother taught me how to remove the smell of shit from clothing in only three washings) and soon I began to learn the trade of the Riveras. They started me off with the really basic stuff like attaching the soles to the shaped leather, and then I moved on to making the soles themselves before I completed my training by learning how to cut and sew the sheets of leather into shoes, "The softest and sturdiest shoes in Oaxaca!", the advertisements would have you believe. If I'm being completely honest, I feel that I may have tarnished _Zapatos de Rivera_'s reputation a little bit with my output. Still, I did well enough to get my own station on the factory floor along with all the other shoemakers.

And then I broke my leg.

You see, that's actually kind of a funny story. Of course, my wife didn't see the humor in that situation at all, and she still doesn't see it to this day, but personally, after I've gotten over all of the pain and even some of the humiliation, I think it's a funny story. So this is how it goes. Here in Mexico, almost every town has its own football team. Some of these teams, like Cruz Azul, Chivas, Tigres, Pachuca, and the like, you've probably already heard of. Other teams, like Santa Cecilia's own team, are a bit more obscure. I'm pretty sure that before today, you've probably never heard of Santa Cecilia's football team. You probably don't even know that we have one. But we do, and even though the team hasn't been doing very well in the past couple of years, the whole town is proud of it.

The town elders disagree when the first football game was played in Santa Cecilia. Some say it was back in the thirties; others say that it was during the fifties. Certainly by the sixties there was already a football city calling Santa Cecilia its home, but it wouldn't get its current name until a certain Señor Ramon Rivera, who had established a shoe shop in town and eventually grew it into the biggest shoe producer in the state of Oaxaca, bought the club and renamed it Zapateros de Santa Cecilia Fútbol Club, reflecting the business that had put him and the town on the map. Don Ramon also paid for the construction of a new and modern 2,000-seater stadium to serve as _Los Zapateros_' new home and replace the school field where the team used to play. The old school field had served the team well, but it had been worn down due to overuse and there were patches of bare earth on the pitch of the old field where the grass no longer grew, so the move to the new stadium was a welcome one.

Anyway, the story about how I broke my leg started when news started spreading around the _zapateria_ that Chicharrón, one of the team's defenders, had been knocked over by a motorcycle on the way to the _zapateria_. He was okay, but he had sprained his elbow (or broken his arm; I couldn't get a consensus from the others during that time) and therefore could not play in the Copa de Oaxaca game against Porfirio Díaz (the team from Miahuatlán, not the former president and dictator of Mexico) later that day. The team, which was made up mostly of the shoemakers and other employees of the _zapateria_, needed someone on short notice to put on the bench and make the team hit the minimum match day squad number required (eleven starters, three substitutes, and one backup goalkeeper), and then all eyes turned on me. Now I admit that football is my passion (after music, of course), and everyone in the _zapateria_ knew that, but like most other people (that I know of), I'm more interested in watching the game than actually playing it. Of course I know the rules, and I know how to play, but I also knew my limitations. I knew that I was never going to be like Hugo Sánchez or Rafael Márquez, but I wasn't sure if I could even keep up with the others for this one game. I've barely picked up a ball since marrying Imelda, so I knew that I was going to be rusty. But what the heck. It was just one game, right?

So I was put on the bench for the afternoon game, and after about seventy minutes or so the game was still scoreless. One of our midfielders was getting tired under the afternoon heat so our coach subbed him off and put me on. Immediately I was bombarded with orders from both of Imelda's brothers, Oscar and Felipe, telling me to get the ball. The only problem was that I didn't know where the ball was. Then I saw the shadow of something flying towards me. I looked up, and saw the ball, nearly hidden by the afternoon sun, arcing right to the middle of the field. Instinct took over; I just knew what I had to do. I jumped up, dimly aware that another man in a red-and-white striped shirt was jumping alongside me. I hit the ball with my forehead, bounced it down towards a player in the brown shirt of a _Zapatero_, and then I landed on my right leg. That was my last memory of that afternoon.

When I woke up again, I was on a hospital bed, with Imelda and a doctor on one side and Oscar and Felipe on the other. My right knee was covered in a cast and was hanging from the ceiling of the room. After reassuring everyone that I was okay, the doctor told me that I had managed to break both the anterior and medial cruciate ligaments of my right knee. The doctor was actually astonished that I had managed to do that. He said that never seen either an ACL or MCL tear in his career since arriving at Santa Cecilia and now here I was.

"So… what happened?" I asked.

"Well, ACL tears usually happen when you jump and land wrong," the doctor explained, "or when you twist and turn suddenly like in basketball. And MCL tears happen when something hits the side of your knee—"

"No, not that," I said. "The match," I added, turning to Oscar and Felipe. "What happened to the game? Did we win?"

Oscar–or maybe it was Felipe, I never really could tell, not like Imelda—shook his head sadly and put a hand on his head. "I'm sorry, Hector," he said. "We didn't. We lost 3-0. They scored right after you were carted off. And then they scored two more."

"Yeah, I kind of know how they could have gotten three goals, thanks," I said sarcastically.

"Hey, Felipe's just telling you the story," Oscar—so that was Felipe whom I was talking to earlier—said to me. "No need to get angry on him."

"If there's someone you should be angry about, it should be that Porfiriato _culero_," Felipe added, referring to the player from Porfirio Díaz. "That asshole, when he saw you had won the ball, just kicked out at you once you landed. I heard the pop right where I was. You fell over unconscious, and then the referee just showed the _pendejo_ a yellow card. He was also the first one who scored from them too. He shouldn't have been on the field after that tackle he did on you. That's just unbelievable. These referees are biased, I'm telling you."

"So we're out of the cup?" I asked.

"Yes, we are," Oscar nodded.

I suddenly felt like a balloon being deflated. I sunk back into the bed and groaned. "_Jesucristo_, this is all my fault," I muttered. "If I hadn't gotten out there, if I hadn't been tackled by that guy… This wouldn't have happened. All this."

"Hey, hey, don't blame yourself for this, all right, Hector?" Felipe said. "Okay, maybe some of the other guys do, but we don't. I don't. You don't blame him for the loss, right Oscar?" he asked, slapping his brother's ribcage.

"_Sí, sí_, I don't blame you, man," Oscar agreed somewhat halfheartedly.

"So, Doctor, what's next?" I asked. "What's going to happen to me? How long will the recovery take?"

"There will be operations," the doctor replied. "We'll need to reconstruct both ligaments. But we can't do that here. We'll need to go to Mexico City for that. After that, recovery will take a year at the very least. Also, I'm sorry to tell you this, _señor_, but after this kind of injury, playing football is only going to aggravate it and make it recur. If you want to keep walking, _Señor_ Rivera, you are going to have to give up football."

"Well, I've always thought about hanging up my boots this afternoon anyway," I joked.

"Actually, it's been three days since the match," Oscar said. "You've been out for _that_ long."

"Really? No shit!" I said.

"Hector! You watch your mouth!" Imelda immediately accosted me. "Just because you're now a disabled person doesn't mean you can now say whatever you want! Coco is going to come visit you later, and I don't want you running off at the mouth with whatever unpleasant things I'm sure are in your mind right now! I swear, Hector, if you so much as slip up and swear in front of your daughter I will personally break your other knee! Let's see you deal with _that_!"

"Yes, ma'am," I nodded meekly. Everybody knows to take an oath made by Imelda Rivera very seriously.

That was six months ago. I'd finally been released from the hospital just about a week ago, and I was still getting used to the sedentary lifestyle of a man who had just experienced a career-ending injury. Not that my footballing career had been something to write about; really, despite all of the ups and downs that I have experienced as a musician, that part of my life was still much more memorable than the one time that I had turned out as an emergency football player for the local team.

Getting out of bed with one of your legs unable to bend because of the cast around your knee was a pain in the backside. Thankfully the house was single-story; everything was just on one floor so I didn't have much trouble with stairs. That didn't mean I didn't have difficulty moving around. Turns out it was actually very hard to navigate around even a simple house on crutches.

It was already ten o'clock in the morning when I had woken up. Imelda was already gone from beside me and off to work; she had said something about now needing to work twice as hard because she now had two babies to take care of. She's still working at the bus depot though. As much as my current situation has put a financial strain on us, Imelda still refuses to come back to the _zapateria_ despite her own mother's assurances that she would be welcomed back with open arms. She's a proud woman, Imelda. She knows exactly what she's going to stand up for, but sometimes her pride does get the better of her, like now. I know for a fact that what she's going to get working in the _zapateria_ is much more than what she's earning at the depot right now, but Imelda doesn't want to come back crawling to her father like I did. But that's exactly what I love about her anyway.

Getting out of bed took another five minutes because of how slowly I had to move in order not to aggravate my knee. The doctor had told me that continued practice would eventually make this second nature to me, but for the moment I'm still struggling. I hobbled out of the bedroom and over to the kitchen where I began to look around for something to eat. I was conflicted about that one, actually. My half-awake brain wanted coffee while my stomach cried out for something more substantial. For some reason my thoughts turned to an English breakfast, but that was obviously out of the question. Coffee would have to do, even if it would leave me with a bit of acid reflux.

My next destination was the living room. The TV was on, and Coco was sitting in front watching MTV. It was a Saturday so this was a perfectly normal sight in the Rivera household, although this was the first time that I had seen Coco watching MTV. "Hey there," I said, sitting, or more accurately plopping down beside her. "What are you watching?"

"Papa, did you know? Tio Ernesto is on the TV!" Coco replied excitedly.

"Oh, really? And what was Tio Ernesto doing on the TV?" I asked.

"I was looking for the cartoons, Papa, and then I saw Tio Ernesto, and he was singing one of your songs, and then the lady on the television said that there's more to come!" Coco said. Imelda and I had agreed not to tell Coco about the real reason why Ernesto and I had broken up our duo. The kid loved her Tio Ernesto the way only a child could. Ernesto had been in her life for as long as she remembers; he was even one of Coco's godfathers at her baptism. Imelda and I had agreed (a rare thing in and of itself) that now was not the time to tell Coco that her favorite uncle had left her father behind to rot in a jail cell in order to pursue a career of his own.

"Really?" I said. "Do you have any idea when Tio Ernesto is going to be back?"

"I don't know, Papa," Coco shrugged. "The lady just said that she'll be back after these messages."

Right on cue, the last commercial ended, and the woman VJ that Coco was talking about came back. She replayed the previous Top 20 hits from number 20 to number 2 and then she said, "And now taking up our top spot, it is once again the one and only Ernesto de la Cruz with his latest single, and also the most requested music video of the week. It is of course 'Remember Me,' from the album of the same name. It's been released only three days ago and yet it's already on its way to gold status. Some are even saying that _Remember Me_ could even make platinum within the week! Anyway, here is our number one hit of the week, 'Remember Me' by Ernesto de la Cruz!"

"Hey, Papa!" Coco said. "Isn't that the song you love to sing to me?"

"Yeah, I'm not so sure about that, Coco," I said. "Maybe the titles are the same but I'm pretty sure it's not the same song. Definitely nothing like my song to you."

The music video started with a shot of the Zócalo at night before zooming in on the Metropolitan Cathedral. A bunch of cars drove by a man dressed in a white mariachi suit and carrying a familiar white guitar. Another zoom in proved my hunch; the man was none other than Ernesto himself, and in the years in between our parting it seems that he had managed to find—or probably more accurately have someone make for him—a copy of my own guitar. The man really has taken as much as he can from me, and when he couldn't get my guitar (for some reason; he really could have claimed it as his own while I was in the can. Maybe there's some decency still left in him) he just made a copy.

A guitar solo began to play, and the camera zoomed in on Ernesto, specifically his hands as "he" started to strum the strings seemingly to the beat of the solo. But I knew better. Ernesto may have had a great singing voice but he couldn't play the guitar worth a damn. Maybe that was why he kept me around for so long before deciding to go his own way. Slowly, quietly, I started to laugh to myself. _All the money and fame in the world can't buy you the talent to play the guitar, Ernesto_, I thought mockingly.

And then my internal laughter died down as soon as Ernesto began to sing. "_Remember me, though I have to say goodbye_…" In the name of Christ Almighty, Ernesto really did have the gall to take my songs and make them his. My songs!

"Papa! See, Papa?" Coco tugged at my shirt sleeve. "I told you it was the same song you sing to me!"

_What in the world have you done, Ernesto?_ I wanted to shout at the TV. "Remember Me" was never meant to be a song for the public; it was my song to Coco, to my daughter and to my daughter alone. And now that _culero_ Ernesto was about to bastardize my song on national television.

"Papa, what's a _culero_?" Coco suddenly asked.

"What!?" I stammered. I must have been speaking out loud if Coco heard me cursing my former best friend. "It's nothing. It means nothing. It's not important. Don't tell your mother you heard me saying that, okay?" I asked in a lower voice.

"Okay," Coco replied, smiling in such a way that I knew, just knew that she was either going to ask Imelda about the meaning of the word _culero_ or she was going to say the word itself, drop it like a bombshell during dinner most likely. I just shook my head and continued to watch.

I don't know how I manage to sit through the next four minutes of Ernesto making a mockery out of my secret song for Coco. The _culero_ danced around the set like he was Ricky Martin in a mariachi suit, accompanied by women both in traditional and modern clothing. Ernesto then walked up to these women seemingly in random and danced with them while singing, acting like he was their pimp daddy and utterly destroying the whole meaning of "Remember Me". It's a wonder that I didn't physically throw up at any point while watching his music video. Relief finally came when Ernesto belted out the final note of the song, "_…until you are in my arms again, remember meeeeeee!_" (for all his faults, Ernesto really does have a big pair of lungs in him) while standing underneath a bell tower, and the force of his voice shook the bell from its mounts and caused it to drop on him, ending the song itself but not the music video. The camera lingered on the fallen bell for a few seconds before the video finally faded to black.

I remember my mouth hanging open in surprise at what I had just seen. The VJ reappeared on the screen, but her words did not stick at all to my dumbstruck mind. I have no words. I was literally shocked speechless. But not Coco. As soon as the music video ended, she was full of questions. "Papa, why did Tio Ernesto sing my song like that? Why was he dancing with all those women? Why did the bell fall on him? Is Tio Ernesto okay? Is he all right? Papa?"

"What? What was that?" I blubbered, secretly thankful that my daughter had brought me back to my senses. "Oh, no. I'm sure Tio Ernesto's fine," I said. "I'm sure that if the bell had really fallen on him, it would be all over the news. And you haven't heard anything about Tio Ernesto on the news or anywhere else before now, right? He's fine, Coco. He's a big boy; he can handle himself. Now," I turned to face Coco, "don't you have some homework to do?"

"But Papa, it's Saturday!" Coco protested. "And it's not even lunchtime yet!"

"Well, better early than late, I always say! Come on!" I said, gently pushing Coco off the sofa. "It's Papa's turn on the TV now!"

"I'm telling Mama!" Coco cried out, but she was laughing through the whole thing. I laughed back at her, picked up the remote, and changed channels. Maybe I would be able to catch a replay of the Tigres–Pumas game from yesterday evening.

* * *

A/N: As always, feel free to leave a review or comment of what you think of this chapter or my story in general. It only takes a few minutes of your time and lets me know what my readers like or not about my story. All feedback is greatly appreciated. Thank you. – GR


End file.
